Challenges Design Guidelines Join Library Community

This is the International

Foodicons Challenge.

Foodicons is a series of five challenges to develop a shared, open-source, and royalty-free iconographic language of food. The global pandemic has highlighted the need for global coordination on food security, equity, and transparency and yet food systems don’t effectively communicate with one another. This challenge, launched in December 2020, will conclude in September 2021 with an unveiling of this free global resource at the World Food Forum and the UN Food Systems Summit. Foodicons offers a giant step towards cooperation between farmers, food producers, retailers, and consumers as the world comes together to strengthen the food system.

Are you a designer interested in joining the challenge? Sign up here.

How it works

Foodicons is a not-for-profit collective action with the stated goal to open source a bank of visual icons that map to 500+ terms that explain our food system. The Foodicons icons will be publicly celebrated at the World Food Forum and the UN Food Systems Summit in 2021, then posted permanently on The Noun Project as a free Creative Commons resource.

By entering, all entrants (designers) retain ownership of their work, whether used or not in the final set of icons. Additionally, entrants whose icons are accepted into the final icon family, posted to The Noun Project, grant a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide right Foodicons.org and those who download the icons from The Noun Project to edit, adapt, modify, reproduce, promote, publish, and otherwise use the entrant’s submission and/or its contents in any way and in any media for educational, promotional, and/or any other purposes (including commercial uses), under the Creative Commons 4.0 BY license, without having to seek permission from, and without consideration or notification to any participant or any third party. Entrants also agree that the entry may, at Foodicons.org‘s sole discretion, be posted online at the contest website and/or any other website as determined by Foodicons.org, for visitors to the website(s) to view, download, and use as they see fit.

Because systems change starts with shared understanding and communication, these icons are intended to provide farmers, ranchers, restaurateurs, supply chain managers, consumers and many more people throughout the food system with an effective way to communicate in a way that transcends language and geographic differences. Our goal is not only to provide people with greater food literacy, but also make the food system more transparent.

Using design guidelines specifically developed for the challenges, designers worldwide are invited to submit icon designs for hundreds of terms selected by the Foodicon’s international committee of food experts. The icons will depict everything from basic elements like water, rice, and gluten, to more complex concepts like no-till farming, plant-forward diets, and appropriate technology.